Soul Beach

her reality TV career, wasn’t her choice. She only liked girl solo artistes with voices as powerful as her own. She would have hated this.
    I think of her under the lid of her coffin. I know she’s wearing stilettos and her second favourite dress, the one with big red hand-painted poppies. She couldn’t wear her true favourite, the silky white wrap dress that flowed like spring water, because she had it on when she was found. It’s evidence .
    I thought coffins were as sturdy as a Landrover Discovery, to see the passenger safely into the afterlife. But hers is slim and sleek, with chrome handles as flimsy as the straps on her stilettos.
    That’s when I stop acting brave. And that’s when I start crying.
    I can’t do it. I can’t see her buried.
    It is the worst thing that could happen to her. She hated the dark, hated cramped spaces, and as for dirt . . . my sister never even made sandcastles because she didn’t want filthy nails.
    Instead, I run home – two miles through the back streets, so I don’t bump into anyone I know. All the way, I try to block out images of her under the ground, hands grasping at the heavy earth, lungs gasping for oxygen but filling up with soil with every breath.
    Is that how she felt when the killer held a pillow over her face?
    My hand is shaking so much that I can hardly get the key in our front door, and my own breath is loud and painful. When I’m back in my room, I peel off my sweaty clothes, but my skin still smells of church, of incense. Of death.
    My computer suddenly seems menacing. I power up, half expecting to find that I imagined that email. And half hoping there will be another one.
    But when I log on, nothing’s changed. The email’s still there but nothing more.
    I stare at it, in case there’s a picture there somewhere, hidden in the pixels, but nothing changes. Not even the time: 10.05.09
    Four months and five days since she left us.
    I open up my email and begin to write.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
My dearest sister,
    No. Totally the wrong way to start. I never used to call her soppy names, and even though she’s never going to see this, she’d laugh, or think I’d gone properly crazy if I started now.
    I delete the first line, and start again.
Megster!
    Better. It’s one of the thousand or so nicknames I had for her.
Where were you, big sis? You missed it. Your own funeral. And they played the worst ever music, you’ll be turning in your grave, eh?
    I’ve never used that phrase before.
I hope you’re OK. In your grave. Though that sounds too weird. I’m really sorry I didn’t stay to throw in the earth or whatever it is you’re supposed to do. I couldn’t face it.
    Earth. The word makes my breathing go shallow again.
I guess if you’re . . . here, somehow, still, then you might have seen me in church. I’m sorry for that too. I know you hate cry-babies.
I tried to tell them not to bury you. I said we should scatter your ashes somewhere you loved, like on the beach in Corfu, but then the police said you had to be buried, in case . . .
    I stop. Would a dead person even care about the fate of their body, or would they have abandoned it like last season’s Primark specials?
Well, let’s not go into that. But you had a hell of a turnout, Meggie. So many people loved you, although even all their love added together isn’t as much as I loved you. You knew that, didn’t you? Even though we didn’t say it often enough . . .
I’m saying it now. I love you lots,
Your baby sister xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    I re-read the email. Maybe I should be telling her everything that’s happened since she went: the silences at home, the tribute single, my ‘better than expected, given the circumstances’ GCSE results, my relapse as a nail-biter.
    But if she’s watching from heaven, then she knows all that already. What she needs to know instead is the stuff that really matters, and I feel lighter now that I’ve told her. OK, so if that blank email was sent by a stupid, sicko fan who hacked her account, then I’ve given him more than enough drama to make his day. But who cares? If there’s a tiny chance she’ll hear me – even if it’s tinier than me discovering men on Mars or a cure for cancer – then it’s worth the risk of some sad loner with a fetish for dead girls knowing how I feel.
    I press send .

3
    My parents are arguing again downstairs. Same old, same old. I thought the funeral might